Prompt: “I have no idea who you are but I just saw you get hit by a car and the car just fucked off oh my god please stop moving while I call 911”

Because apparently not enough stories have Vex in ugly car accidents. Whoops.

****

Vex’s had three thoughts when she opened her eyes.

Number one was that her arm really fucking hurt.

Number two was that her bike was probably fucked as well.

Number three was that the first two didn’t matter that much, since she was apparently dead.

“Hello,” Vex said to the angel that leaned over her. Sunlight halo’d around his white hair, and she had to squint to see his features. She hadn’t paid much attention in Sunday school when her father had cared enough to force her to go, but she was pretty sure they’d never mentioned angels being hot. “Are all angels hot, or is it just you?”

“Okay, I was going to ask if you could tell me your name, but now I’m pretty sure you’ve got a concussion.” Mr. Hot Angel even had a hot voice, deep and smooth. He smiled a half-smile that seemed blinding, or maybe that was the sun in her eyes. “When you’re ready though, I’d like to know your name. That’ll help.”

“Take that, Dad. I am getting into heaven.” Vex smiled back at her angel, then tried to sit up. The world spun around her, and her side felt like it was on fire. She lay back onto the pavement, which was much more comfortable than… wait….

Mr. Hot Angel kept talking, though now that she was looking at him again he wasn’t talking to her, but to his phone, “Yes, a hit and run. Just outside the park entrance off of Abadar’s Promenade, near the lake. A black pickup with Pennsylvania plates clipped a woman on a bike. The truck went north after that, but I didn’t get the plate. The woman is…she seems out of it, but she’s awake. Her arm looks broken, or maybe her collarbone. Her arm’s at a weird angle… She’s not in the road; she got knocked onto the sidewalk.”

“Call me Vex, Angel.” Vex blinked again, and the world came back into a sharp focus. It was as if everything he’d just said processed through her head at once. “Wait, wait! Don’t call an ambulance!”

“Too late, um, Vex. They said they’re sending one already. Stay still, you don’t want to fuck up your arm anymore.” Mr. Hot Angel held his hand out over her shoulder on the side that didn’t hurt as much. “Can you tell me your full name?”

“My full name is I don’t have insurance! I can’t afford hospital bills right now!” She tried to get up again, but the pain in her side and the sudden anxiety of having to pay for an ambulance bill left her gasping for air. Her left arm hung limply at her side. Between all of that, and then seeing her bike mangled on the side of the road twenty feet away, Vex did the only thing that made sense.

She burst into tears.

Mr. Hot Angel didn’t touch her, just kept his hand out somewhat uselessly. He looked around, as if someone would willingly come over to help two people who were obviously freaking out. “Oh, oh god. Vex? Vex, it’s going to be okay. Is there someone I can call for you? Someone who can meet you at the hospital?”

“My, my…” Between hiccuping sobs that just hurt even more, Vex tried to get a deep enough breath to get the words out. “My brother. He’s…he’s gonna have his phone off though. He’s at work.”

Her hand shook as she tried to reach for her purse, but she had to turn to reach it, and that sent another wave of pain over her. For a moment she couldn’t even breath enough to keep crying. Mr. Hot Angel grabbed it from where it had fallen, and after she gave him a nod, unzipped it and dug around for a moment before pulling out her phone. He flipped it open and asked, “What’s his name? I’ll text him for you.”

“Vax. But he’s in my phone as shitbird.” Vex gave a half-hearted laugh at the look on Mr. Hot Angel’s face at that. “Just… tell him I’m okay and talking and to meet me at the hospital. And….fuck, I can’t….”

Her eyes started welling up at tears again. They were only just making ends meet at the moment, and she probably could call Syldor for money, if she had to… She watched the man type something out in her phone, taking long enough that she was sure Vax would be concerned by how wordy the message was. “Can… can you just tell me your name so I’m not calling you Mr. Hot Angel in my head?”

Behind his glasses, Mr. Hot Angel’s eyes went wide. “Percival Fredricks… Just Percy. You’re probably too concussed to deal with the whole thing. It’s going to be okay, Vex. You’ll be okay, and Shitbird will meet you at the hospital.”

“Thanks, Percy.” She winced as she heard a car pull up beside them, then looked up to see a cop getting out of it.

“What happened here?” Asked the cop, and Percy stood to talk to her. Vex squinted up at him, light still filtering into a halo around him because of his hair. She and Vax didn’t have the best track record with the police, so at least she had someone else talking for her, at least for the moment.

Does anybody know the ethnicity of Miss Missouri Jennifer Davis? I'm watching Miss America, and while she is a WOC, she just did a Bollywood dance in full get-up for her talent, and I'm 100% sure she isn't Indian. I read an interview and she said she flat out said she started dancing Bollywood for exercise and "fell in love with the culture." So, I'm pretty sure this isn't OK.

Miss America follow-up: Since my state got eliminated, I’m rooting for Miss Pennsylvania, a South Korean woman who just played “Listen” from “Dreamgirls” on the saxophone and blew my mind.

Miss America follow up: So the Jennifer Davis thing gets worse because she, a non-Indian woman, did a Bollywood routine in front of judge and former Miss America Nina Davuluri, the first Indian-American Miss America.

Ok sorry for not responding to this sooner but this got buried in the asks. I couldn’t find Jennifer Davis’ ethnicity but she looks Black. Honestly this culture appropriation shit isn’t just for white people anymore.

A 55-year-old Pennsylvania mother of seven, sentenced to serve two days in jail because her children were absent too much from school and she couldn’t pay some $2,000 in truancy fines, was found dead in her cell.

The Associated Press reported that District Judge Dean R. Patton, who sent her to prison reluctantly, blamed a judicial system that imprisons poor people who can’t pay fines for minor offensives such as truancy fines. He said:

“This lady didn’t need to be there. We don’t do debtors prisons anymore. That went out 100 years ago.”

It hasn’t gone out in Pennsylvania.

The dead woman was identified as Eileen DiNino, of Reading, who went to jail to wipe clean some $2,000 in fines and court costs imposed on her since 1999 because a number of her children were absent too much from school in Reading and Muhlenberg townships.

The AP reported that more than 1,600 people have been jailed in Berks County over school truancy fines since 2000.

As it turns out, the judge who bent over backwards to keep noted wife-beater Ray Rice out of jail, is the same judge who has refused to dismiss the charges against Shaneen Allen, a Pennsylvania woman who was arrested for having a gun in her car while she was in it. Rice will get no jail time for knocking out his wife, but Allen will go to jail for 3.5 years for exercising one of her Constitutional rights.

When Ray Rice beat his wife unconscious in an elevator, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Michael Donio and New Jersey District Attorney Jim McClain agreed to put him in a diversion program for 1st-time offenders to keep him out of jail. But when Pennsylvania single mom Shaneen Allen was pulled over for a traffic violation and volunteered to a New Jersey police officer that she was carrying a legally-owned handgun with a Pennsylvania permit, the response of Donis and McClain was to deny her the same opportunity as Rice.

Allen lives in Philadelphia, right across the river from New Jersey. She has a Pennsylvania permit to carry a handgun. She thought it was recognized in New Jersey, just as it is recognized in over 30 other states. She was wrong. When she told the officer that she had the gun, she was arrested.

Now she faces a felony conviction and a mandatory 42 months in prison. Both Donio and McClain have been unwilling to dismiss the charges, or send Allen to a pretrial diversion program. They seem to want to make an example of her.

The problem is, she’s being punished for something the Constitution says – and the Supreme Court has agreed – is a constitutional right. And the super-stiff penalties and abusive prosecution she’s experiencing are pretty clearly intended to chill people from exercising that right.

“I’ve been touched by the generosity of the Americans who’ve written me letters and emails in recent weeks, offering to open their homes to refugees fleeing the brutality of ISIL.

"Now, people should remember that no refugee can enter our borders until they undergo the highest security checks of anyone traveling to the United States. That was the case before Paris, and it’s the case now. And what happened in Paris hasn’t stopped Americans from opening their arms anyway.

“One woman from Pennsylvania wrote me to say, ‘Money is tight for us in my household…But I have a guest room. I have a pantry full of food. We can do this.’ Another woman from Florida told me her family’s history dates back to the Mayflower—and she said that welcoming others is part of ‘what it means to be an American.’” —President Obama on Thanksgiving

So, I just want to start this off by saying, I wasn’t sure about posting this. I went back n forth after the party and all day yesterday wondering, mostly because I was not sure whether I needed permission or not. These are all stories about Colin and the making of a movie that is not released to the general public yet that were told to me from the goodness of Ryan Lacen (director/screenwriter/producer), Anthony Baldino (director/producer) and Nikolas Geerken (composer(?))’s hearts.

[In Transit] is my dream film, but it requires so much travel and is going to be expensive to make. I’ll get on long-distance trains in China, Australia, Western Europe, South America and Africa and I’ll walk through the train looking for someone who I think may have a story. Then, when it’s time for them to get off the train, I’ll get off with them and start filming. I was on a train in Pennsylvania, and this woman got on in Pittsburgh. She had two kids with her and was 26 and, right away, she had to tell me why she was on the train. When she was three her family broke up. It was an ugly divorce and she had never seen her mother again after that. After all of those 23 years, she had just gotten a call from a woman in Philadelphia saying, “I’m your mother. Get on the next train. Meet me at the train station.” So I filmed her getting off in Philadelphia and, as she was about to go up the stairs into the station, there was already a woman waiting there at the top of the stairs. She flung open her arms and rushed down the stairs and they embraced and talked for a bit. Then the mother turned to me and said, “Isn’t she gorgeous?” It’s that sort of stuff, that humanizing stuff, that I think is so worthwhile and so satisfying as a filmmaker.